PortraitHistory has obscured them. In 1943, a thousand French women responded to General Merlin’s call and served in the female communications corps. After the death of Antoinette Faivre-Trobs at the end of April, Colette Escoffier-Martini would be the last “Merlinette”.
Colette Escoffier-Martini was one of the thousand volunteers who joined the female communications body in 1943. She was one of those who helped liberate their country. But who remembers it? They have indeed been forgotten, erased from history, these brave people who had been nicknamed the “Merlinettes”.
Is she the last one still alive, Colette Escoffier-Martini? It is probable, but no one really knows it and this uncertainty is in itself eloquent. The death, on April 27 in Besançon, of Antoinette Faivre-Trobs was only reported by an insert in the regional press. No official source can confirm today if there are other survivors.
At 98 years old, Colette Escoffier-Martini has passed the age of glory and, alas, that of memories. “It’s far away, all that”, she says. It was not easy to find his trace, in a retirement home, towards Salon-de-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône).
His daughter and granddaughter are by his side. During a move, Roselyne and Céline Digoix found the military papers of Colette Escoffier-Martini. Fortunately, they are there to testify, these administrative junk! “She was not talking about what she had done”, explains Roselyne Digoix. In her armchair, the old lady listens to her daughter talk about what she was, with a half-smile that seems to open up on blurry images of the past.
Participation in the landing in Provence
Colette Martini was born on 1er November 1922 in Rabat. His father, Sylvestre, is a teacher of Corsican origin who, in the trenches of 1914-1918, won the Legion of Honor and lost a leg. Her mother, Suzanne, was a nurse during the Great War, like her grandmother during that of 1870. After the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942, Colette wanted to follow their example. She is in the second year of medicine, leaves her studies and applies as a paramedic in the ranks of combatant France.
At the end of 1942, a colonel, Lucien Merlin, proposed to integrate women into the communications service. By giving them these positions, his idea is to free up men who will be more useful in other functions. The candidates flock and are therefore nicknamed, in reference to their designer, the “Merlinettes”. Colette Martini applied and joined a training center in Hydra, near Algiers.
The French secret services (the “second office”) then organized the sending behind the German lines of commandos, made up of three members including a radio operator, in charge of supporting the Resistance.
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